


Head In The Clouds

by taormina



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), SPECTRE (2015), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Aircraft, Bond is a cheeky little bastard, Established Relationship, Fear of Flying, Fluff, Kissing, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-17
Updated: 2015-11-17
Packaged: 2018-05-02 02:36:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5230664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taormina/pseuds/taormina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is the story of how Q got over his fear of flying.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Head In The Clouds

‘I hate flying Economy. It always makes me feel so _normal_.’

‘This is the only morning flight that was still available,’ Q pointed out, already exhausted after having spent three hours with Bond on an airport despite having a crush on him the size of an Aston Martin engine. He apologised to the stranger who vacated the aisle seat and carefully made his way to the window. ‘Or do you really believe that M wouldn’t notice your hiring a private plane? He’s on to us, you know. He can’t _possibly_ not be.’

Bond put his bag in the luggage compartment. It was the only bag he had with him on this trip; the arms and technology he required would be arranged by a contact of Q’s once they touched down.

‘No, he’s not,’ said Bond. ‘If he calls we’ll just tell him we’re on holiday.’

(This mission was completely and utterly unofficial. Even _thinking_ about it was prohibited. If M was ever to find out about it – and he would –, both their careers would be on the line, and yet here Q was, facing a fear that was even bigger than losing his job; a fear that, at the end of the day, had nothing to do with how genuinely scared he was of flying.)  

(Bloody James Bond and his delectable blue eyes.)

‘Isn’t that what you always say?’

Bond smiled. ‘Is it? I hadn’t noticed.’

‘What if you’re ever _genuinely_ in need of a holiday?’

‘I’ll tell everyone I’m on a secret mission in pursuit of world peace.’

Once they were both more or less sitting comfortably and Q had pulled down the window blinds so he wouldn’t see where they were going, Q conveniently put his laptop on the seat tray and flipped it open. On the screen that flickered on, it showed a highly classified conversation with Tanner that was cleverly disguised as a regular IM service. In the conversation, the details of Bond’s cover were discussed. Right now, they were going for ‘disgruntled school headmaster’.

In the meantime, Bond was pressing the buttons on his armrest in a thoroughly unimpressed fashion. ‘How do people not go mad in these things? I’ve been on busses that were better equipped than this,’ he said like the petulant, spoiled image of a man who normally only ever boarded private jets.

Q was busy typing a response to Tanner’s message and so didn’t bother looking at Bond when he accidentally broke the armrest. ‘It’s only a one-hour flight, 007.’

That’s what he kept telling himself. It was only a one-hour flight. He would survive this. He had _not_ previously looked up the probability of something terrible happening, like android stewardesses taking over the aircraft and dropping them off in Wales.

‘ _Still_. I don’t like it.’

‘Are you going to spend the _entire_ flight complaining?’

Bond hummed. ‘Are you going to spend the entire flight wetting your trousers, Q?’

Q’s fingers stopped in the middle of a sentence. The light of his laptop highlighted his face slightly.

‘Moneypenny told me you’re afraid of flying,’ Bond elaborated when Q pressed his lips together. ‘Back when we were on Silva’s trail? I’m _sure_ she got it wrong, though,’ he added sarcastically. (Moneypenny hadn’t; Q was definitely, unquestionably terrified of flying, and how could Bond _not_ tease him for it?)

Q continued typing. ‘Indeed,’ he said flatly. He was definitely blushing. ‘Now can we please get back to work?’

‘It does make you wonder, doesn’t it,’ Bond went on speculatively, ‘whether you’ve ever flown at all. I don’t think I’ve even _seen_ you on a mission abroad before.’

A stewardess passed to check whether everyone had their seatbelts on, and Q almost knocked over his laptop as he hastened to fasten his. He didn’t know how. When he turned a flustered face towards the stewardess, she had already gone.

‘Here, let me,’ Bond offered, and he went and grabbed both ends of Q’s seatbelt after he’d fastened his own. His hands brushed Q’s jumper-clad belly as he did so, and by the time Bond had finished and a soft _click_ sounded, a guilty flush had spread over Q’s cheeks that had little to do with the embarrassment of being in an aircraft for the first time.

‘There, that’s better,’ Bond said, all innocently. ‘It’s not too _tight_ , is it?’ 

‘No, not at all,’ Q said, a little shakily, and he continued what he was doing. His hands looked less steady than they had before, and once or twice did he curse under his breath because he had accidentally mistyped a sentence and sent it to Tanner.

He could never get used to being touched by James, and James could never get used to seeing the look on Q’s face whenever he did.

‘So, what exactly did you want to talk about?’ Bond said with a nod at Q’s laptop. Q had added yet another sticker, one Bond assumed was the logo of some underground band he did not know. (It was actually a British girl group.)

Q’s eyes flicked to the man who was sitting next to Bond. He had dozed off. ‘We haven’t discussed your cover yet,’ he whispered.

‘I told you, Q, I don’t need one. The enemy already knows we’re coming.’

‘I know,’ – Q inhaled sharply when he heard the overhead voice of the pilot announcing something. He desperately tried to drown out the words in his head so he wouldn’t be reminded of the fact that he was definitely in an aircraft, and definitely, very soon, up in the air – ‘but it doesn’t fill me with confidence, 007. The very reason we’re keeping M in the dark is because we cannot risk too many people knowing about what we’re up to. Both our careers are on the line here, if you hadn’t noticed,’ he added dramatically.

Bond ignored Q’s worries about their self-assigned mission. ‘You _really_ don’t like flying, do you?’

‘No,’ Q admitted finally.

‘Why?’

It wasn’t fear of flying as such; it was the fear of getting there – up _there_ – mixed with that terrifying feeling you get before you reach the top of a rollercoaster. (Q hated rollercoasters. Moneypenny tried to get him on one once, on a rare day off, but Q pretended he’d received a text from M and ran off.)

He trusted the technology. He trusted the people behind it — he just didn’t trust the feelings it gave him and what he might do once they reached altitude.

Because he knew, too well, what he got up to whenever he got too high.

‘I just don’t.’

A stewardess told Q to put the seat tray back up and stow his belongings. He didn’t know where to put his hands when he wasn’t busy typing, so he folded them on his lap after he’d carefully put away his laptop. He looked nervous; perfect bait.

‘You must’ve known you’d be asked to travel when you applied for this job.’ Bond said matter-of-factly. When he looked out of the window at the other side of the aircraft, the image of the airport terminal slowly receding as they moved, he saw that they had already neared the runway. Just any moment now, and they’d be departing to a classified destination. Together.

‘Can we please talk about something else?’ Q said anxiously.

‘Like what?’

‘Your assignment.’

‘We discussed it this morning.’

Q rolled his eyes. ‘What you had for supper, then.’

‘Poached salmon and asparagus, with garlic mayonnaise and potato salad. You?’

‘Chinese.’

There was the roar of an engine, and the colour drained out of Q’s face when the aircraft sped up considerably. Something was rattling. Bond knew it was the harmless package inside his bag above them, Q didn’t: he was now clutching his hands so tight that his knuckles had turned white.

They’d talked about this when they first kissed. Being affectionate towards one another in public could have drastic consequences, both for the sake of their careers and their respective performances out in the field.

But Bond couldn’t help it. When his hands found Q’s, the obscene sound that escaped Q’s lips far drowned out the sounds of technology and excited hubbub all around them.

Q thought his stomach flipped upside down because they had taken off.

He was wrong. It had because he suddenly found Bond’s lips on his, turning the rumbling and rattling of the aircraft into music in his ears, and butterflies in his belly. When he closed his eyes and pulled Bond as close as the broken armrest between them would let him, for a moment he found himself not in an aircraft parting the clouds, but on cloud nine. He was exactly where he should be.

He’d always assumed that kissing Bond would be like wrestling with one of his less behaved cats; awkward, messy, with a few bumps and scratches along the way.

It was nothing like that, still not: he was gentle. Caring. Bordering on romantic.

(And thus it wasn’t _Bond_ ’s hands that found a piece of exposed flesh above a loosened belt, but Q’s, forever lingering in places where they shouldn’t.) 

Bond smelled strongly of peppermint, and delicious cologne with a faint hint of sweat. Q had never realised how good he smelled before — and, more importantly, how good he tasted on his tongue.

Q opened his eyes and found Bond staring back at him with a look in his blue eyes that very much mirrored how Q was feeling.

‘Still afraid of flying, Q?’ Bond said, sounding self-satisfied and horny and everything he shouldn’t be ahead of a top-secret mission in a place Q couldn’t pronounce.

He was feeling on top of the _world_.

‘My fear seems to have faded considerably, thank you, 007,’ Q said formally, pushing up his glasses as if nothing had happened and he and Bond in fact kissed and touched regularly. (They didn’t: this was only their second time.) ( _Third_ if you count the time when they kissed in Q’s lab — that one had been a bit of a mistake, with Moneypenny walking in on them and punching the air because she had just won a considerable sum of money in a bet.)

It _felt_ like they kissed regularly, though; that way Bond’s mouth fitted perfectly on his? And how he knew to touch his hair just so? Bloody _marvellous_.

‘I take it this wasn’t in any way related to our assignment?’ Q said, sounding just a bit smug to have been kissed so wonderfully.

‘No,’ was Bond’s reply, and he went and unbuckled both their seatbelts. He reached over to the window and pulled up the blind, and there was blue sky everywhere.

It looked beautiful. Absolutely terrifying still, but beautiful.

They had kissed for so long that Q hadn’t even noticed taking off. The flight was so short that the stewardesses were already busy preparing that morning’s tasteless breakfast.

The rattling of the aircraft was still prominent, but less worryingly so.

Q looked at his own hands in Bond’s. It was as though he’d found a missing puzzle piece, completing him and making him whole. He was still getting used to the fact that Bond’s hand was his to hold. ‘You didn’t really need me on this mission, did you, 007?’

Bond’s face lit up. ‘No.’

Q shook his head as though saying ‘I should have known’, and looked out of the window. It really did look beautiful. The shadow of their aircraft passed over cotton candy just overhead, and he even thought he could see an oddly shaped rainbow. Beneath the broken up pieces of cloud, he saw sea. He might enjoy this after all, being up here with Bond.

When Q turned to Bond again, there was a look in Q’s eyes that was only usually reserved for exciting inventions that someone else had made and he had his eyes on. Bond could only describe it as _want_ ; pure want that at first he didn’t even think the spotty Quartermaster had in him. ‘Do you always make advances on people when they’re afraid?’

The man next to them had woken up from the food trolley that was moving past, so Bond whispered, ‘Only if I want to. And when they’re mind-blowingly attractive.’

Q chuckled at that. ‘My being with you is not going to be a problem is it, 007?’

‘That depends on the problem.’

‘ _Hm._ Quite. Talking of problems,’ Q retrieved his laptop from his bag and turned it back on. He collapsed the tab with his conversation with Tanner and clicked a picture of the place where they’re be staying back into view. Suiting the potential grimness of their mission, it was only a two-star hotel. They had two separate rooms booked.

Q’s eyes flicked to their still-awake neighbour, and he lowered his voice so that it matched Bond’s whisper. ‘What if I told you I’m very afraid of staying at unfamiliar hotels on my own?’

There was that smirk again. ‘I’m sure something can be arranged.’


End file.
